Contents

Current sample library release

You can find a collection of sample content formatted for the XO online. Materials in the library should be formatted as content bundles and added to the library grid. The current version is release 0 and is a draft; the first release will be frozen on July 20, 2007. This is not "the" OLPC library (anyone can make library materials and libraries for use on the laptop, and there will be different libraries for each country), but a sample library that we've made to test ways to share modular materials. The latest software builds for the XO include this library for testing; see Library Release Notes for more, and a high-level description of the activity below.

How to contribute

If you have been porting your own collections, books or other works to display neatly on the XO, they can be included in this collection. To suggest a collection, leave a note on this talk page with a description and link to the latest version. (Some suggested collections, specifically those in languages other than the current targets of English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French, Thai, and Urdu, are linked on this site but have not yet been incorporated beyond the wiki.) Also see the list of Library contributors.

Library activity

The Library activity will be an activity for browsing books and media in Sugar. This should provide an intuitive way to search and browse through different kinds of text and media, including granular reference works, classical texts, image galleries, audio books, and videos. It should display rich information about highly collaborative materials, with ongoing updates, version #s, and dozens of authors.

The activity should make it easy to search for and request new materials for the library from outside sources (international digital libraries, regional or national repositories, the local mesh). It should provide a way to publish new material for others to access. And its infrastructure should allow users to change its layout and what kinds of data it displays.

The initial Library activity is rolled into the browser -- the browser is planned to have a small icon that takes you back to your library from wherever you are, and browsing to leaf nodes of the library will take you away from library navigation elements. In the future these two activities may be separated.

Purpose and Goals

An intuitive interface for finding media

The Library should provide a layer of abstraction on top of the available reading, editing, and searching activities. It should offer a single place to look for information and media, though there may be separate text-readers, video-viewers, audio-players, and editors for each of these materials.

Through the default interfaces, we can suggest some of the useful metadata that can be filtered up to the highest levels of indexing and browsing.

Initial targets

The simplest initial targets are a library of image-light books, in text or crossmark; a subset of these available as audiobooks; 5000 encyclopedia entries; 1000 dictionary terms, with words in 10 languages; a library of images, each with short metadata strings and sources; and a set of short videos.